DaleSpam said:
I would call it a boundary condition because you need to know the value on that edge in order to solve the differential equation. That is what a boundary condition is. But, you need to know more than just that there is an edge, you need to know the value of your function at the edge.
If the actual, physical object is annular (a disk with an actual hole in it), then yes, the values of physical parameters at the edge are going to change because of the boundary condition there (something like "density goes to zero"), and that's going to affect the solution.
If the actual, physical object is a disk with no hole, but I restrict attention to an annular region, then no, that "boundary condition" does not affect the solution; I have to solve the equations for a disk with no hole, and then restrict attention to the portion of the solution that I'm interested in. If I solve the equations with the "boundary conditions" included, I will get the wrong solution, the one for a disk with a hole, not the one for a disk with no hole where I'm not looking at a region in the center.
Or let's consider this case: I'm modeling a capacitor. Consider two different possibilities:
(1) The actual, physical capacitor has finite-sized plates, and I'm interested in their entire area. My solution will then have edge effects because of the finite plate size; in other words, the boundary condition affects the solution.
(2) The actual, physical capacitor has extremely large plates, but I'm only interested in a small area near the center. I impose a "boundary condition" of a small plate area; but if I then solve the equation using that condition, I will get the wrong answer: my solution will have edge effects, and there aren't any in the small area I'm considering--the edge effects are way out in a different place that I'm not modeling. To get the right answer, I have to ignore the "boundary condition" and instead solve the equations with a much larger "real" plate size, and then restrict my solution to the small area I'm interested in. (What I'll really do, of course, is solve the equations assuming infinitely large plates, but that's just a shortcut to make the math easier since I know it will give the same answer as the more complicated procedure that's strictly correct.) The "boundary condition" here does *not* affect the solution, which is why I would prefer *not* to call it a "boundary condition".
The parallel with the case of Schwarzschild spacetime should be clear. If I impose a "boundary condition" r > Rs, that doesn't change any of the actual geometric invariants at Rs or as r -> Rs. Those invariants are all given by the solution with no boundary condition at the horizon, the one I derive purely from the EFE with the assumptions of spherical symmetry and vacuum plus the coordinate conditions on the line element. The boundary condition adds nothing to the solution; it's just a way of restricting attention to a portion of the complete manifold.
Contrast this with, for example, a solution for a static, spherically symmetric star. Here there is a boundary condition that does affect the solution: there will be some radial coordinate r at which the spacetime is no longer vacuum. That does affect the geometric invariants.